Simon’s Quest doesn’t deserve to be called a bad game. The music and graphics are quite good for the NES and the open structure of the game was quite novel and many elements like the leveling system became staples of the series from SotN onward. The thing that really holds it back is the terrible english translation which makes the puzzles way harder than they need to be.
IIRC it is actually a different physics engine than BotW. BotW couldn’t handle all the physics interactions in TotK. That’s what’s so impressive about the game. Physics-based games are rare, especially for AAA-developers, because it’s just a lot of work. In TotK everything just works as you’d expect. You’re just looking at it from a gameplay perspective while ignoring the technical achievements.